Arthur awoke to a very strange sensation. He couldn’t pinpoint it at first, but he knew for certain that something was very, very wrong. It seemed to be morning outside, which made sense – if he craned his neck, he could see Sidney asleep on his cot in the next room; so far, so normal.
It was only when he sat up in bed and reached for a drink to wet his parched lips that he realised what it was.
‘Sid,’ he called scratchily, clearing his throat and then trying again. ‘Sidney. Come here.’
‘Wha—?’ Sidney said, falling out of bed and attempting to get to him even as his blankets twisted around him. ‘Whassappening?’
‘Start again,’ Arthur said. ‘Retrace your steps. You have to get out of bed before you can do anything else. You’re currently trying to bring the bed to me.’
‘Right,’ Sidney said, flopping back on to his bed like a fish before managing to extricate himself and rushing to Arthur’s side. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Well,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it. Look at me.’
‘I am looking at you,’ Sidney said, his eyes darting all over Arthur as if searching for some new injury or evidence of impending death. ‘You look fine.’
‘Exactly,’ said Arthur, nodding. ‘I feel fine. Dare I say – I think I am fine.’
‘What?’ Sidney said, looking genuinely baffled. ‘That can’t be right.’
‘Watch this,’ Arthur said. ‘I’m going to do a trick.’ He pushed off the covers, then pulled himself upright and swung himself around so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Jesus,’ Sidney said, impressed. ‘What else can you do?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Arthur said, as they both stared down at his legs. They looked thinner and ropier than usual, less sturdy, and he wasn’t entirely sure they’d hold his weight. He tried anyway, and found them to be strangely shaky and useless underneath him; Sidney caught him before he made a mess of his kneecaps.
‘Good trick though,’ Sidney said, trying to get him back into bed; Arthur was having none of it.
‘The only way to get better at walking is to walk,’ he said, throwing an arm around Sidney’s shoulders and leaning heavily on him as his thighs started to shake. ‘So let’s walk.’
They completed a few very wobbly laps around their chambers before Sidney insisted on depositing Arthur in a chair and calling for breakfast; the novelty of it all, of being able to sit opposite Sidney at the table and spill runny egg all down the front of himself and nibble at pieces of bread and laugh almost as if it were any other day, made Arthur feel giddy.
‘We should call for Gwen. Show her what I can do. She’ll probably weep with joy, poor lamb. Actually – where is Gwen? I haven’t seen her or … well, nobody’s visited me for days.’
‘Yeah,’ Sidney said, wiping crumbs from his mouth and leaning back in his chair. ‘Funny thing, that. Tried to go and see Aggie yesterday afternoon when you were conked out and the bloody guard wouldn’t let me into the royal wing.’
‘Odd,’ said Arthur. ‘Might be a security thing.’ He dropped his knife, and when Sidney tried to grab it for him, he held up a hand to stop him and insisted on doing it himself. As he leaned down, he noticed a small brown package on the floor, as if it had been dropped and forgotten. ‘What’s this?’
‘Dunno,’ Sidney said, following Arthur’s nod and then leaning over to pick it up. He unwrapped the paper and extracted a long pendant. They both watched the cut black stone rotate slowly between them at the end of its chain. ‘I’ve seen these before, they’re meant to be … I dunno. Charms. Spells. They keep you safe.’
‘Well. Excellent. I suppose somebody brought it as a gift,’ Arthur said cheerfully, taking it from Sidney and looping it over his head. ‘I like it. It’s hard and black, like my heart.’
‘Your heart is soft and yellow,’ said Sidney. ‘Like marzipan.’
‘I have the heart of a lion. And the legs of a horse. I’m going back to bed, but tomorrow let’s show everyone what these shapely pegs can do.’
He felt even better the next morning; shattered, with aching limbs as if he’d run a marathon rather than taken a hundred steps around the same fifteen-foot radius, but it was such a novelty to feel tired from physical exertion that he was in an extremely good mood. Not even the sight of his closely cropped hair in the mirror, or the fact that he could now barely bend his wrist, was enough to put a damper on the pure joy of being somewhere other than his bed. He had never felt so emotional about a chair before.
It was slow going, the business of getting back on his feet, but he was powered by determination and the strange, insistent twist of anxiety he felt in his gut every time Sidney attempted to glean any news from the royal wing, and heard nothing.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Arthur demanded, when Sidney returned once again without news.
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Sidney said, obviously very worried. ‘Focus on getting all your parts in working order and then we’ll sort it out.’
He reported back to Arthur that the castle was absolutely packed with people; hundreds were turned away every evening for dinner in the Great Hall, and the crowds attending the tournament as they approached the finale were enormous.
‘And I saw your father,’ Sidney said hesitantly, as they sat down to eat dinner on the day Arthur managed to walk the length of the corridor outside his room mostly unaided.
Arthur tried not to wince, but realised too late he’d done it anyway. ‘Joy of joys. Did he offer any explanation as to why he hasn’t been up here yet? A note expressing his concern, perhaps?’
‘Er …’ said Sidney. ‘No. He pretended he hadn’t seen me, actually.’
‘Of course he did,’ Arthur said, sighing. It was a particularly frustrating conundrum; he had absolutely no desire to see his father, but his imagined, shadowy progress around the castle beneath Arthur’s feet was almost as intrusive as if he were standing in the room. ‘And the others?’
‘Haven’t had a reply to those notes yet,’ Sidney said, through a mouthful of bread. Increasingly annoyed by the lack of visitors, Arthur had asked him to send messages to Gwen and Gabriel, informing them that he was out of bed, and had expected them to appear immediately to rejoice in the miracle; in a moment of madness he’d also asked Sidney to deliver one to Bridget. That had been yesterday morning; they had all gone unanswered.
‘It’s starting to feel somewhat personal.’
‘Nah,’ said Sidney, impressively unconvincing. ‘They’re probably just busy. With the tournament.’
‘Let’s pay them a visit, shall we?’ Arthur said suddenly, trying to get up and managing more of an undignified stumble, during which he had to grab on to the table for support.
‘What, now?’
‘Yes,’ Arthur said insistently. ‘Now.’
‘You have to let us in,’ Arthur said to the least threatening-looking guard.
His eyes darted sideways, and then he gave a minute shrug. ‘Can’t.’
‘Well, why not?’ Arthur asked, trying to look intimidating and probably only succeeding in looking a bit miffed.
‘You do not have access to the royal wing,’ said a different guard with an impressive moustache.
‘Under whose orders?’ Arthur demanded.
‘The princess,’ said the unthreatening guard; the moustachioed one narrowed his eyes at him, as if he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.
‘Let me talk to her,’ Arthur said. ‘This is clearly a mistake, we’ll have it fixed in a—’
Two very sharp swords were suddenly within scratching distance of his chin.
‘Oi!’ Sidney said, pulling Arthur roughly backwards. ‘No need for any of that. We’ll be going.’
‘But,’ Arthur said, twisting in Sidney’s grip, ‘if they just—’
‘If you don’t come with me now,’ Sidney muttered sternly, ‘I’ll just walk off and leave you here. And you can’t really stand up on your own, so you’ll just flop straight over and lie here on the floor waggling your limbs in the air like a dying bee until someone else takes pity on you. So. You coming?’
‘Fine,’ Arthur said belligerently, allowing himself to be pulled away. ‘But – take me to the library.’
The library was apparently not included in the parts of the castle that had become mysteriously off-limits; there was, however, a pair of very listless guards standing at the door, which confirmed Arthur’s suspicions about who might be within.
‘I need you to distract them,’ he said to Sidney, ducking out of sight. ‘Just – get them away from the door, and I’ll slip inside.’
‘You’ll “slip inside”?’ Sidney scoffed. ‘You going to slither in on the floor like a snake?’
‘If needs must,’ Arthur said, with as much dignity as he could muster.
‘Fine,’ said Sidney, looking resigned. ‘Which distraction, do you reckon? Number four? Number six?’
‘Modified 1.5,’ Arthur said, grinning at him.
‘I hate modified 1.5,’ Sidney said darkly, but he gamely walked away. Arthur waited for a minute or two as he took the long way around, and then he reappeared at the far end of the hallway as if coming from the courtyard, and dramatically listed sideways, swearing and half collapsing to the ground.
‘All right down there?’ one of the guards called, clearly thrilled that something vaguely interesting was happening on his shift.
‘Oh God,’ Sidney moaned. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know – what sort of rash do you get if you have a lover’s disease?’
‘A lover’s … ?’ the guard said, exchanging an amused look with his counterpart.
‘Just, I don’t know if you can get it, doing what we did – oh God, it’s gone such an unnatural colour, I think it might be about to fall off—’
‘Fall off?’ Distraction 1.5 never failed; hilarious and disgusting human misery was too strong a lure. The guards glanced back into the library to check their charge was safely within, and then headed for Sidney, intent on seeing what may or may not be about to detach itself from his person.
Arthur didn’t have to slither into the room like a snake, but it did take rather a lot out of him to get through the door before they turned around. Once inside, he slowed down, leaning on the shelves for support; he grappled his way towards the back corner, where a candle was burning low.
‘Boo,’ he said flatly, when Gabriel glanced up in alarm from the book he was reading. He looked dreadful – as if he had been the one ill in bed for over a month.
‘What are you doing?’ Gabriel said, closing the book and immediately looking around, as if for backup.
‘That’s a funny way of saying “Glad you’re not dead, Arthur”,’ Arthur replied, trying to steady himself as dark spots encroached on the corners of his vision.
‘You can’t be here,’ Gabriel snapped. It was so unexpected that Arthur’s mouth dropped open; he was unsure whether the pain in his lungs was due to overexertion or the fact that Gabriel was looking at him like he was some horrifying spectre.
‘Tell me what’s going on,’ he demanded; Gabriel stood up, and actually seemed to back away from him, further into his corner.
‘How did you get past the guards?’
‘Oh – killed them all in cold blood, obviously,’ Arthur said incredulously. ‘I didn’t do anything to them. Sidney’s distracting them – with a little something we call the “bachelor in distress”.’
‘Leave now,’ Gabriel said slowly, ‘or I’ll call them to have you removed, Arthur. Stay away from me, stay away from my sister—’
‘Are you possessed?’ Arthur shouted, accidentally knocking one of Gabriel’s books to the ground, and feeling a horrid jolt of unease when Gabriel flinched. ‘What have I done, Gabriel? Because I don’t understand. Tell me—’
Gabriel hadn’t needed to call for the guards; Arthur’s shouting had done the job for him. They came up behind him and grabbed him quite forcefully by the arms. What little strength had powered him to the library was long spent, and he didn’t even attempt to struggle as they started to drag him away.
‘Gabriel,’ he said, knowing he was pleading now and finding he didn’t care. ‘Please. Come on. Shit. Please. Tell me what I did.’
Gabriel said nothing, his face stricken. In the lamplight, he looked strangely young – not like a future king at all, just a boy, being swallowed whole by the dust and the darkness and the thousands of words of history closing in all around him.